February 04, 2013

The Possible California Oil Boom

Comprising two-thirds of the United States’s total estimated shale oil
reserves and covering 1,750 square miles from Southern to Central
California, the Monterey Shale could turn California into the nation’s
top oil-producing state and yield the kind of riches that far smaller
shale oil deposits have showered on North Dakota and Texas.

For decades, oilmen have been unable to extricate the Monterey Shale’s
crude because of its complex geological formation, which makes
extraction quite expensive. But as the oil industry’s technological
advances succeed in unlocking oil from increasingly difficult locations,
there is heady talk that California could be in store for a new oil
boom.

A casual reader might infer that the new developments include the fracking and horiziontal drilling techniques that have revolutionized oil production in North Dakota and Texas. However, CNN explains that the problem is more complicated than simply moving established technology westward:

As a result of the San Andres fault,
California's geologic layers are folded like an accordion rather than
simply stacked on top of each other like they are in other Shale states.
The folds have naturally cracked the shale rock, and much of
California's current "conventional" oil production -- the third largest
in the nation -- is thought to come from the Monterey.

But the folds mean recent advancements that have
made shale oil and gas profitable to extract -- horizontal drilling
combined with hydraulic fracturing -- don't work as well in California. It's hard to drill horizontally if the shale is not flat.

Plus, it appears the Monterey is made up of
shale rock that doesn't respond as well to hydraulic fracturing -- the
controversial practice known as fracking
that involves injecting water, sand and chemicals into the ground under
high pressure to crack the rock and allow the oil and gas to flow.

OK. The Times also present the environmental issue as a simple scuffle of Greens versus Frackers. Here is a Geoffrey Styles, energy consultant delivering some nuance:

However it is eventually unlocked, the Monterey shale offers significant
benefits to California. Start with the fact that the state's oil
production has been in steady decline
since the mid-1980s. Together with the depletion of Alaska's North
Slope field, that has meant that the US West Coast, which was once a net
exporter of oil, now imports increasing quantities of oil--half of it from OPEC--to meet local demand. That trend has continued even as the import dependence of the rest of the country has fallen substantially
due to higher production and receding demand. The Monterey could slash
California's imports, while adding billions of dollars a year to the
local economy and to the shaky state budget, along with lots of good
jobs.

It could even provide environmental benefits. Restoring oil
self-sufficiency would reduce the risk of spills from the tankers
bringing in imports, while refilling existing infrastructure. And if
the Monterey yields oil similar in quality to the light, sweet crude now
being produced from the Bakken and Eagle Ford shales, it could actually
cut both greenhouse gas emissions and local pollution by reducing
the refining intensity required to turn the state's current diet of
heavier crudes into ultra-low sulfur gasoline and diesel fuel.

However, Mr. Styles' heart is not yet racing:

I suspect from my research in the last few weeks that anyone betting on
an imminent explosion of oil output from the Monterey shale is likely to
be disappointed. The process seems likely to be slower than elsewhere,
though with a bigger potential payoff. But that doesn't make it
irrelevant to a state that has set its sights on being at the forefront
of the transformation to cleaner energy sources. California still
consumes 1.8 million barrels per day
of petroleum products, and it will burn many more billions of barrels
on its way to its chosen future of electric vehicles running on wind and
solar power, and trucks and buses burning compressed or liquefied
natural gas. Developing the Monterey shale won't solve all of
California's energy challenges and might create a few new ones, yet it
could prove another timely contribution from a local oil industry that
has been a major driver of the state's economy for well over a century.

Comments

TK-- In all seriousness the Unified Executive POTUS (which I do support) has the authority to administer arms sales approved by Congress. Not sure how the House repubs "stop" such executive action in any event. BTW-- I am a proud independent voter. registered NYC Dem 1976-1990, Ct indy since.

I think you would find that state level Republicans behave differently than the Congressional variety. Here in Georgia, the GOP governor and the Democrat Mayor of Atlanta get along quite well. In the states, it is the Democratic legislators who do the annoying things like try to shut down government. (And they pay for those tactics -- as henry can tell you.)

As for gun control -- I do not see the GOP either in Congress or the states lining up to appease the Dems on this. The issues where the GOP could be accused of looking wobbly is the debt limit (a bad place to have a fight on fiscal responsibility, simply because refusing to pay debts is not fiscally responsible), and immigration. (An issue that has ALWAYS divided the GOP)

--"Not sure how the House repubs "stop" such executive action in any event."--

An amendment championed by Paul and his like-minded senators to eliminate the sale of weapons failed yesterday by a vote of 79-19, with all 19 votes for the amendment coming from the GOP. The amendment would have suspended the sale of F-16 fighter jets, M1 tanks, and similar weaponry to Egypt.

((Morgan has no concept of guns in America or how we relish our 2nd amendment right. ))

Countless rational arguments, facts, statitistics, history, and example after example have been put to him by his guests that prove he is on the wrong side of the argument, and all that just goes one ear and out the other. Nothing rational registers with him. He is an extremely stupid man. Can you imagine a teacher having to deal with such a dullard of a student?

Graham is a Senator from the state where I am required by law to cast my vote.
I voted for him in the primary because IMO the other candidate could not have defeated the Democrat candidate. Am I happy with his votes in the Senate? Not always, but I would never have been happy with any vote casted by a Democrat Senator.

IMO, the best info any Republican politician
can relay to the voters is that they will always oppose any position the Democrats hold. There is simply no position the Democrats hold on any subject that I support.

this business that the Republicans have to "explain" what they are doing doesn't have much hope of success imo. all liberals are like Piers Morgan; they are not rational beings, and "explanations" will fall on deaf ears.

CH, I celebrate with you the completion of your daughter's practical lesson on life, and the sea. I may have mentioned this before, but my great-niece and her boyfriend/partner (sigh) run a sailboat crewed charter out of Sitka, Alaska each summer. She does the chef duties. Your daughter might get a kick out of talking with her. I can steer you toward the charter website, if you wish.

On the crew page, you will see Kelsey Boesch, my great-niece. Her grandparents were their guests on a cruise last summer, and on that same trip, both my brother and his wife caught a nasty strain of pneumonia. Dewey had a compromised immune system due to the anti-rejection meds for his transplanted heart, and it proved fatal. But what a way to go! A great trip with the love of his life and some quality time with a much-loved granddaughter.

The Calif mortgage laws and Blue State Hell Default generally. Narc brought up 'bailout' earlier-- I don't think Congress bails out those States-- primarily because by that point the FF&C of the US Gov't will be worth shite, so no bailout will be available. Instead, I believe, a new bankruptcy code chapter will be created for State reorganization of debt and pension obligations.

I thought the same thing about Sylvia as she was venting on Rush. She has done that to Rush before and I seem to recall her rants were similar to what our Sylvia had been spouting here...so maybe she is the same nut.

I have seen his A-frame house in Girdwood that he allegedly had $250,000 extra dollars work done on up close. It is impossible for $250,000 worth of extra work to have been done on that house, and any jury in Alaska that went up to the damn thing and looked inside would immediately know it. The FBI lied, the Chief Prosecution witness lied, exonerating evidence and testimony was hidden from the defendant, and the whole damn thing was yanked away from a Jury of his peers and shipped off to corrupt DC. We will simply have to agree to disagree on this one. Dem Senator Daniel Inouye knew and worked with Ted Stevens for 40 years and said the whole thing was bullshit. I agree. It was bullshit start to finish, but it accomplished what it set out to do---taking Stevens down, and nobody paid any price for it all except Senator Ted Stevens. Everyone else in this entire fiasco and miscarriage of justice skated.

The prosecutor abuse was hiding exculpatory evidence and allowing false testimony at trial. If they hadn't tried him, there would've been no abuse.

Innocent? maybe not so much.

Based on the lying star witness? Or one-sided evidence because of systematic concealment of evidence favorable to the defense? And as for the charge, the cabin itself wasn't worth the supposed upgrade cost. Total railroad job. Stevens may have been guilty of something, but not on this one.

We'll never know the truth about what Stevens did because of prosecutor misconduct, and we'll never know the truth in the Libby matter because the witnesses are lying 'journalists'. Now as to Menendez and his crony Fla supporters and his young-- very young-- prostitutes, there' a case that cries out for a special prosecutor.

I'm with Kim about Libby. He did not lie. He stumbled with his "memcons." Armitage was the lying assassin; Powell the untouchable protector and betrayer of trust; Marc Grossman the mole; Wilkerson the rabid dog in the mix; the trial a sadistic joke.

His son Ben Stevens was speaker of the State House and had his office raided by I think 7 FBI agents at least twice during the time of the Repub Prosecutions. Ben Stevens was never prosecuted for any crime, but I think no relative of Ted Stevens will ever, or could ever effectively run for the Senate in Alaska, just like I don't think we'll ever see a Palin run for office in Alaska ever again.

Ben seemed to me to be the standard nepotistic political sibling sort that we see in Begich or Murkowski or the Kennedy's, etc. I am not a fan whatever of Ben Stevens, but of Ted, tho' I do not admire his continual tactic of sucking money for Alaska's development out of the Fed's for 40 years, I just do not see the personal corruption he was falsely prosecuted and falsely convicted of. Of son Ben I have no such feeling as to his character.

Jan Brewer, John Kasich and a few others in signing up for the Fed Mediscam on the states in ObamaCare.

What's that, you say? Nothing to do with gun control? I think it's a developing pattern.

By the way, Appalled, your abortion post, and the back and forth on the thread here, illustrates what horrendous decisions Roe v.
Wade and Doe v. Bolton were. There is no basis in the text or history of the Constitution for conclusding that the Constitution forces states to outlaw abortion, or that the Constitution prevents states from outlawing or substantially regulating abortion. As much as people on all sides of the issue disagree strenuously, none has a claim on the US Constitution in this matter. Roe and Doe got the first part correct (US Constitution doesn't require states to ban abortion), but in getting the second part wrong, have in effect created greater legislative turmoil than if the issue had been left to the states, beacause pro-life individuals will never yield an inch on a question on which they think (quite justifiably so) SCOTUS has played the judicial tyrant card.

My conclusion has always been, that because of the 'relationship' between Libby and Miller, he knowingly lied to the FBI about conversations with her. he chose to lie to the FBI, rather than tell the truth to Bush, b/c if he told the truth to Bush, he would have been fired. That's what I concluded from that sordid mess of a sham, of a trial. As a juror I would have voted 'not guilty' because of many reasonable doubts about the testimony of those lying 'journalists', but that doesn't make Scooter 'innocent'. As to Fitz's lies at his press conference, and witholding the truth that he knew who outed Plame from the get go... well, there's your ultimate villain right there.

TC@2:41-- I completely agree with. For 30 years, I have caused my NYC lawyer colleagues to suffer the vapors and seek fainting couches by ...um... vigorously asserting that Rowe was the 3rd worst decision in the history of the SCOTUS, b/c Roe denied the democratic and constitutionally mandated political solution to abortion by the 57 State legislatures and the Congress. TC rightly claims that Roe is judicial tyranny. To this day I refuse to tell Libs how I would vote if I were a legislator, b/c the SCOTUS denies every legislature from having a ProLife vote. (IMO --worst SCOTUS decisions were Dred Scott and Plessy -- Korematsu 4th-- Obamacare constitutional as tax? TBD)

Republican members of the House of Representatives, where the party holds a majority of seats, discussed the killings in their weekly closed-door conference meeting and said afterward there was more willingness now to talk about regulating weapons.

"You are going to have some people who never, never go there," Representative Steve LaTourette, an Ohio Republican, told reporters, referring to a small number of Republicans who will not countenance any talk of gun regulation.

"But yes, I think most Republicans are willing to have a very, very serious conversation about what this means and taking a second look at what the Second Amendment (guaranteeing the right to bear arms) means in the 21st century," he said.

As to Fitz's lies at his press conference, and witholding the truth that he knew who outed Plame from the get go... well, there's your ultimate villain right there.

Sorry, but this whole theory just doesn't make any sense. As we learned after the fact, nobody outed Plame because nobody knew she was covert (and she wasn't, at least in any meaningful way). When Armitage leaked info from a classified document it was inappropriate, but he had no intent to divulge anything classified, let alone the identity of a covert agent.

Similarly, Libby's view of the whole JCWilsonIV fiasco was primarily to distance the office of the VP from the knucklehead (and dispute the "behesting" BS). His wife's employment was at most a relatively unimportant footnote, and the idea he could recall precise details of three minor mentions of that unimportant fact three months on is ridiculous. And he said precisely that (multiple times) during the GJ testimony . . . and wasn't smart enough to shut up afterward.

Dell can't get their deal done on time today.Everyone is just treading water.People feel drained and enervated. Nothing is changing because all the companies are frozen. Everyday the price of Obamacare goes up and everyone feels helpless to stop it. This is what re-election of an idiot feels like.

Hmm. It does sound like (on 12/18) they were licking their fingers, and seeing which way the wind was blowing. But I think that was more a rhetorical -- let's not seem unreasonable -- crouch. Has anything become anything concrete?

Reaon I am pressing is that it seems the Democrat are having more trouble with this issue than the GOP.

Cecil:
You are absolutely correct.
The real target was the WH and Cheney. I still remember their absolute outrage when Cheney did not testify at the courtroom. They were apoplectic. The crazy corroborating of testimony on live MSNBC was laughable. Gregory, Russert and Mitchell were the worst offenders. I still believe the pressure of lying contributed to Russert's death. He looked sick in the courtroom and at heart he knew he was sabotaging the truth. For a small town Buffalo boy that was a lot to try and rationalize.

I'd agree with your list, NK, and I'd add the 19th century SCOTUS decision that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional to the SCOTUS Hall of Shame decisions. The first Mr. Justice Harlan, to his credit, dissented both in that decision and in Plessy.

I'm confused. I thought Valerie suggested at the CIA that hubby go on this "fact-finding" mission because of his prior work?

Libby didn't know that until long afterward. (It came out in the SSIC report in 2004.) All they knew was that she introduced him at the meeting . . . which is at best indicative. (And irrelevant, as far as they were concerned; they just wanted to emphasize the OVP didn't send him.)

weekly closed-door conference meeting and said afterward there was more willingness now to talk about regulating weapons.

If Republicans compromise on our 2nd Amendment rights...what's the use of them?
They already don't like the pro-life people & the believe in God people....we're suppose to shut up cause social conservatism is supposedly a loser. They don't like the secure borders people either....they also need to shut up.

Appalled, we've got democrats and republicans working together to put us into deeper and deeper debt at a terrifying rate, pursuing the bipartisan comity of giving trillions to their cronies in exchange for hundreds of thousands kicked back to them.

And you think that problem is that they don't work well enough together?

Heck, without the far-too-occasional nasty political spat we'd have been spent into Greece DECADES ago.

As we learned after the fact, nobody outed Plame because nobody knew she was covert (and she wasn't, at least in any meaningful way). When Armitage leaked info from a classified document it was inappropriate, but he had no intent to divulge anything classified, let alone the identity of a covert agent.

It's even more than that. When Fitzgerald was finally forced to release the state dept report that Armitage "leaked" from, it was very very very clear from the content of the report that Plame's CIA employment was NOT secret and not being KEPT secret by the CIA from that point in time 15 months BEFORE Armitage read the report and talked about it.

There were probably OTHER things in the report that were classified, but the fact that the guy that the CIA sent to Africa is married to one of their employees was NOT classified in Feb of 2002 because in Feb of 2002 the CIA sent her to the meeting during her CIA work hours. IF she HAD been a covert agent, the CIA would have sent some OTHER CIA employee to the meeting to introduce Joe Wilson, and that CIA employee would not have discussed Wilson's marriage.

In most cases of gossip, it is impossible to track the gossip back to its source. In this case, however, the complete paper trail came out in court: the CIA gossiped to their State Dept liaison about who Joe Wilson was married to. 14 months later the State Dept liaison repeated the gossip to his supervisors in a report which contained classified information and gossip mixed together. Anyone with any passing familiarity with procedures with classified information would put the "Plame and Wilson are married" tidbit into the "gossip not secret" category with absolute certainty, since there was no remote intelligence purpose to having Plame at the meeting. The gossip tidbit made it to Armitage directly because the CIA gossiped FIRST. And you can follow the direct chain of gossip from CIA gossiping to Armitage repeating the gossip that originated from the CIA.

I remember the letter and it was definitely weird - I just don't remember any suggestion that Libby and Miller were romantically involved. I thought the aspen reference was code for some kind of political intrigue among the influential types that meet up in Aspen.

Hardly. It was a reminder of the fact the Aspen Institute is notorious for using the fact a stand of aspens with many trees has a single root system as a metaphor. Libby was reminding her he was a member of the "one big oligarchy" sharing the same common disease.